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Jarrett, sailors heading home to San Diego

SAN DIEGO — Several hundred sailors will reunite with their families in the coming days.

The guided missile frigate Jarrett will arrive at its berth at San Diego Naval Base on Monday, wrapping up a five-month deployment to Southeast Asia as part of CARAT, or Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training, missions.

The ship visited the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei and trained with those nations’ navies, and they completed more than 30 community relations projects in Indonesia, U.S. 3rd Fleet officials said in a news release.

During the deployment, Jarrett joined the task force led by Destroyer Squadron 1 that included the dock-landing ship Tortuga, guided missile frigate Ford, rescue and salvage ship Safeguard and Coast Guard cutter Morgenthau.

Also, a group of 65 sailors are expected to arrive Saturday morning at North Island Naval Air Station in Coronado, Calif., after a four-month deployment aboard the hospital ship Mercy.

The members of Maritime Expeditionary Security Detachment 531 are part of Maritime Expeditionary Security Squadron 5. During the deployment, Mercy and embarked teams including medical specialists visited several countries and helped residents in the Philippines, Timor-L’Este, Papua New Guinea and Vietnam, according to the Navy. The detachment helped with security for more than 360 convoys and at piers and medical facilities at Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea.